Prologue
18 years old
“Savannah Rae Porter, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
His eyes were so hopeful, and I hated what I was about to do to him. “Cal, you know I can’t. We’ve been over this. I have dreams that are so much bigger than this small town.” I had loved him for as long as I could remember. He was the same boy that had punched the classroom bully in the mouth when he had pushed me down and put a run in my white tights. He was the same boy that’d been my first kiss at the age of twelve; back when we had no idea what we were doing. But we’d figured it out. And he ended up being the boy that had taken my virginity.
Now he was the boy that was begging me to stay with him in Canton, Georgia. But that was his dream, not mine. My dream was bigger than this town, and he knew that. We were barely eighteen. Hell, we had just graduated from high school that night. But here he was, pulling me aside at our friend Luke’s party and proposing marriage.
I looked down into the brown eyes of Calvin Fuller, or Cal, as everyone always called him. I could see that it was breaking his heart, but he had to have known that this would be my answer. I’d talked about leaving this small, suffocating town since we were fifteen. I reached my hand out and tousled his brown hair. His brown orbs were full of sadness. I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around him. I murmured that I was sorry and felt his warm breath on my stomach. Thankfully, he was still on his knees, making this easier. He stood at six foot three, and while I wasn’t exactly short, standing at five foot eight, he still managed to make me feel like I was.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. I meant it too. There wasn’t anything in the world that I would have wanted more than to be this man’s wife. “But I have dreams. I’m leaving,” I remind him.
He sighed into my pale blue dress. “I know you are. I just thought maybe I could be enough to make you stay.” His voice was barely audible in the warm Georgia night. “This town isn’t so bad. Jesus, Sav, we’ve lived here our whole lives. Please be my wife, live on my folks’ farm, and raise some beautiful babies with me.”
“We’re only eighteen,” I said. I turned my back on him and pinched the bridge of my nose. I’d known he was going to do something like this. I had just hoped I was wrong. That it wouldn’t be something so dramatic, something that wouldn’t break us. I’d hoped to make love to this man one more time and then leave on the red-eye—make my way to LA and start pursuing my dream
of becoming a model.
I was a pretty girl, there was no denying that. I wasn’t vain, just honest, which was what I always jokingly told my sister and Cal. They both knew it was true. Even my sister had told me that I had the kind of beauty that made people stop and take notice. My long blonde hair reached the middle of my back, and my frame was small, thin, and almost gazelle-like. I had large, expressive green eyes, plump lips, and a confidence that I told myself would make me unstoppable. Which is why I was hoping that I would have the same effect on people in LA. The city wasn’t going to eat me alive. My beauty would pull me through.
I heard rustling behind me, and turning, I saw that he stood at his full height. Our gaze met, and the stubborn brown eyes looking into my green ones told me we weren’t done fighting. I sighed. “Don’t,” he said, rushing over to stand before me. Our chests were touching, and his was heaving. He was gearing up for another round of Please don’t go. And I didn’t have the energy. I wanted my last night to be spent hanging out with my friends before I left them all. Some were headed off to college, and others were going to work on their parents’ farms, same as Cal. But not me. That town didn’t hold a candle to the dreams I had, even if it housed the only man I knew I’d ever love.
“Cal, please. This isn’t how I want to spend our last night together.” I reached my hand up and ran it along his strong jawline. He leaned into my touch, and it made me smile. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Fucking hell, Sav, you don’t have to miss me! You could stay here with me. There’s something in this town for you too,” he insisted. I had heard all of it before, and I shook my head, dismissing his claims. “I don’t want to live without you. I can’t live without you.”
“Then come with me,” I begged. “Don’t make me be the one who has to give up on my dreams.
Come with me and let’s live them out together.”
“What exactly would you have me do?” His chest heaved, his eyes darkening with anger. “My family needs me here. I’m their only son. I’m all they have.” He punctuated the words by jabbing himself in the chest. “They need me to run the farm. My dad is getting too old to do it on his own, and we need the money.”
I understood what he was saying, but I hated it. “But what about all of the baseball scholarships
you received? I bet if you spent some time playing ball at the college level, you could enter the draft and maybe be picked up for a major league team. We could travel the world together, you and me.”
“I turned all of those scholarships down, you know that. I can’t leave my family. I have responsibilities. I can’t pretend they don’t exist.”
“Well, I am,” I reminded him for what felt like the millionth time. This argument wasn’t new.
We’d been having it for months—ever since the day he had realized that I was serious. I was going to move to LA and take whatever crappy job I could find until modeling paid the bills. My family didn’t own a farm like his. Instead, my dad worked as the vice principal of the middle school. My mama owned a dress shop downtown. I was expected to help my sister with it, just like I had all my high school years. But I wasn’t staying around for that. My sister, Annabelle, would do it. She got along way better with our parents than I ever had. This town was her cross to bear, not mine.
“How can you be so selfish?” he asked me.
“Because I feel like I will die if I stay in this town. There’s a great big world out there, Cal, and I want to experience it.”
“I do too!” he shouted out at me as he paced. “But I’m not running out on my parents like that. They need the farm to stay alive because that’s their only source of income. I’m not going to be the selfish prick who says, ‘Sorry, Mom and Dad, I’m outta here,’ no matter how fucking good I am with a bat and a ball.” I turned my back, so that I was looking out at the lake on Luke’s property. “I’m sorry that you don’t understand my reason for going. I’m even more sorry that you think I’m selfish. But if you love me, you’d try and understand. You’d let me go.”
“I can’t. I can’t let you go. You’re all I’ve ever known. You are the only woman I will ever love,my sexy Savy,” he said, using the pet name he’d once called me as joke. It was a name that he’d called me a thousand times. Everyone called me Savy, but he was the only one that had called me sexy Savy. I had liked it then, and I still did now. It reminded me of a happier, simpler time when things were easier. When we had less responsibilities and only worried about each other. “It’s you and me against the world,” he said. I smiled, remembering what he said to me when my father found out that we were dating. I had expected him to be upset that I was dating Calvin. He wasn’t a bad kid, but at the time, his grades weren’t the greatest. He’d been in detention more than he was out because he couldn’t stop daydreaming about baseball. But oddly enough, my dad had been more accepting of him than I thought he would be. My whole family had been. I often joked that they loved him more than me, and most days, I wasn’t not sure if it was a joke. “I’ll always be your sexy Savy, no matter how far away I run from this place.” My voice was barely above a whisper. I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat. Leaving him was going to be harder than I thought. He came up and stood behind me, his strong body lining up with mine. The heat of him touching me set me on fire. “Calvin,” I whimpered into the night as his hand snaked up under my dress.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice all throaty and sexy. “What do you need, babe?”
Babe. I would miss hearing him call me that. I knew no one in LA would. “Touch me,” I
pleaded. He never answered me. He just took his stealthy fingers and placed them inside my thong, brushing my wetness. I moaned at the touch. Hauling my body against his, he offered me support. “I got ya. You go ahead and fall apart here.”
“I don’t wanna come like this. I want you inside me when I do.”
“You’re gonna come like this, and then you’re going to come again with me inside you. If I only get one more night with you, then I wanna make it count.” He lips brushed my neck, and I was at a loss for words.
Instead, I spoke with my body. I let my body tell him how much I loved him, how much I would miss him, and how much I wished that things could be different. He seemed to be saying the same thing when he laid me out on the blanket he’d brought with us.
He pulled my dress over my head, leaving me completely bare before him. No more thong, no more strapless bra—I was his for the taking. He smiled heatedly at me in the moonlight. I’d never felt more loved or desired. The familiar sound of his zipper coming undone made me even wetter with anticipation. “Cal,” I moaned. “I’m coming, baby.” Cal discarded his jeans and pulled his shirt over his head. A condom was rolled down his length before he aligned his body with mine. He kissed my forehead and the tip of my nose, then gently took my lip between his teeth and bit down before entering me.
I cried out at the sensation from the light bite and him filling me. Calvin moved in and out of me in slow, deliberate strokes. We savored every moment. When we finished, he stayed inside me, resting his forehead on top of mine.
“Thank you for scratching my back one last time,” he said quietly. I snickered. I had always managed to tear him up. But he always managed to make the most animalistic sounds come out of my mouth, so I couldn’t help myself.
“I love you, you know,” I told him.
“Just not enough,” he said sadly. He pulled out of me and began searching for his clothes. “You and I would be ruined if I stayed here. The shackles this town puts on me would break us.
Maybe our time has passed. I had you for a season, but things change—Seasons change. I love you enough to know that I have to go.”
He didn’t look at me, only nodded. “Seasons change,” he muttered. All of this had been said before, but now it would be said for the last time.
“Let’s go inside. Let you say goodbye. And then I suppose I should get you off to the airport.”
“Yeah, okay. Let’s do that.” I was leaving that night. I had too. I didn’t want to stay there any longer. My parents and I had made a deal—graduation night, I could leave. They hated it at first and fought me tooth and nail. But in the end, I had won. And my prize was leaving graduation night so that I could start my life. The same way the rest of my classmates would be starting theirs that fall.
Chapter One
19 years old
The first few months in LA, there’d been many tears. I had cried at a sad song or during romantic comedies that I’d watched cuddled up alone in my bed. My apartment was tiny, and something my mother would describe as seedy, but I didn’t care. It was mine. The loneliness I felt from being without Cal was palpable. But I would survive, I knew this. And survive I was. I’d showed up in LA with just a few suitcases and the number of a hotel that rented rooms by the week. I had rented one until I could find something more permanent—which ended up being a place above a bar. I wasn’t old enough to frequent it, but the bouncer would
wave me in. I’d sit alone in the corner of the room and watch the other patrons hanging out and laughing or in the midst of hooking up. It gave me hope that someday I would be just like them again, happy and in love.
I wasn’t unhappy, though, in all areas of my life. The hardest part was being here without Cal. The best part was that I was working as a model—slowly. But it was happening. I had been hired to do a handful of shoots for back-to-school clothes for a spread in a local women’s magazine.
Agencies were starting to notice. In fact, I had just come back from an interview with one today.
I was pretty sure that Allure was going to offer me a contract. The thought both thrilled and excited me. I wanted to call Cal and tell him all about it.
But I didn’t. We hadn’t spoken since the day I left. I was okay with that at first, because I knew that leaving him would be one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But I managed to get through it. I managed to leave the boy I loved, looking like his whole world was breaking, at the airport as I hopped on a 747 and relocated my life to LA.
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